


birds out of water

by Beckingham



Series: flock together [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: 22nd Century World Building, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Bigotry & Prejudice, Canon Compliant, Darcy and Jane are just mutually dependent which pretty much translates the same, Discrimination, Dubious Romance?, F/M, Fertility god Thor, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Jane Foster: Storm Chaser and Possible Lunatic, Jane and Darcy are refugees from the future, Like, M/M, Mentions of genocide, Mood Whiplash, Multi, Non-Sexual Dubious Consent, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Relationship(s), Perpetual College Student Darcy Lewis, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Semi-Canon Complaint, Steve and Bucky are together to the end of the line, Steve and Bucky wouldn't mind getting the hell out of it either, Warm and fuzzy brainwashed Winter Solider feels, a lot of really fucking dark shit, all that pesky time travel, and there kinda is later, anti–Semitism, except for, future fashion trends, if you think the future would be some sort of utopia this is not the fic for you, lots of time travel, non-consensual sterilization, people being awful, some sexual and sensual content, there should be a support group for it, you know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-21 17:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3701111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beckingham/pseuds/Beckingham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 2155 and the world is ending. The population of Earth is faced with three options: go down with the ship (not ideal), seek out compatible planets (with ever dwindling hope) or going back in time to live out their lives untouched by their planet's distant fate. Jane and Darcy have chosen door number three and decided to settle in 2011 after Jane reads about some very intriguing spacial occurrences that took place back then from a still unknown source in New Mexico. (Darcy is down to just roll with it.) </p><p>Steve and Bucky? Less pleased with waking up decades out of their original timeline. </p><p>Everyone deals eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. back to the start

**Author's Note:**

> My brain got jumbled one day and I mashed up the idioms "like a fish out of water" and "two birds with one stone" to "bird out of water" and then I built a fic around it. 
> 
> I'm amused by the idea of a Time Travel Anonymous support group, but plot may happen too.
> 
> I have no idea if I'm going to include other ships besides Jane/Thor, so feel free to give me input on that. 
> 
> Unbetaed. Will be edited as errors are spotted. I encourage anyone to point out any they notice.

**2155**  
_approximately one decade before full evacuation is complete_

They’re next in line and she’s gripping Jane’s hand so tightly that her friend winces and aims a frown at her. Their matching plastic wristbands rub together marked with longitude and latitude and _very_ carefully dated. Darcy must have run her thumb over it a hundred times by now while Jane hasn’t spared it a glance since they were tagged upon admission except to check that all was in order. 

She knows that Jane doesn’t understand her trepidation; her head far and above the clouds while Darcy twines her fingers through the strings that keep Jane from floating away like the kites she’s seen in the documentaries she’s devoted the last two years to. She lets her go when the handlers come over to them, carefully inspecting them for anything suspicious or contraband that they may have in some impossible way smuggled past the many previous checkpoints. It’s the first time they’ve been out of confinement in sixty days and Darcy is more than done enduring the endless testing and prodding and she’s spent _so many_ months preparing for this new world while Jane’s dreamed of old worlds.

She’s so distracted reciting long discarded lingo to herself, afraid that the words will trip off her tongue like an accent no one can place and she’ll give herself away. ( _Totes_ is _totally_ is an “eager or causal confirmation” and "holy shit" is situational and can express disbelief or awe or bewilderment or a _completely insane situation that she doesn’t feel at all equipped for._ Holy shit, holy shit, holy--)

“Are you ready?” The man running one last scan on her asks absently. 

She smiles brightly. “Not in the least.” 

“Well, too late now.” He’s already moving on.

_And getting later by the second._ She sighs, forces herself to unwind, and follows Jane, like always. 

Jane doesn’t look back, like always. 

“Are you ready?” Jane asks (an unknown echo), near trembling in anticipation, and Darcy links her hand in hers again. 

She hums softly, a tune from long ago, like so many old songs she’s been singing as she lets go of the songs that they’ll never hear in their lifetime except maybe when she lies in bed at night and breathes in and out without film coating her lungs. She’ll sing the words as they have never been sung before, into unburdened air. 

Jane is waiting for her answer.

“As I’ll ever be.”

* * *

**2001**  
 _earlier than planned_

Jane wakes to stiff sheets and flattened pillow and dried tear tracks and some crusted drool at the corner of her lips and--

_Someone is touching her wrist._

She gasps and jerks and the air is so light on her skin she clenches her fists together like she can secret it away for another time when the world becomes heavy again. She exhales and then desperately inhales again and again, unwilling to stop when it’s so overwhelming _sweet_.

“Jane. Jane!” Darcy is shaking her shoulder as she heaves and fills herself to near bursting. 

“Miss, we need you to move away,” a foreign voice snaps and Jane grabs Darcy’s arm before they can pull her away. It’s hard to understand him over the roar in her ears and unfamiliar accent; the one she’s heard Darcy practice time and again, the one Darcy is speaking in _now_ as she tells the man that she won’t leave her and Jane hasn’t realized exactly how much she needs Darcy there until the threat that they might send her away and if she wasn’t so panicked by it she would be ashamed at how she’s taken Darcy for granted.

She forces herself to exhale, breathe deep and slow the air that is almost harsh in her chest.

“Jane?” Darcy is there, gripping her shoulder. “You with me?”

She opens her eyes, then closes them against the brightness in the room. 

Everything is so _vivid_. She can’t _wait_ to see it all. She really can’t help the rasping laugh or the wide grin that nearly makes her cheeks ache when she meets Darcy’s (blue, so blue) eyes.

“When are we?” Her toes curl with excitement and Jane can already feel herself counting the days.

(“What did she say?” The man on her right asks a woman by his side. Jane fleetingly wonders if maybe she should have sat with Darcy as the girl consumed film after film and carefully repeated lines until they were practically muscle memory on her lips.)

Darcy grimaces slightly. “Two thousand and one.” She offers Jane a lopsided smile. “A little off the mark.”

Jane takes another deep breath, relishing it and allowing herself to think on this. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, something inside her concedes. After all, she’s woefully unprepared for anything besides a clear view of the sky.

“Well,” she places her hand over Darcy’s and squeezes, “gives us some time I suppose.”

The smile broadens into a sincere grin. “Right on, boss lady. Soon as you’re ready we’ll get this show on the road.”

Jane feels her eyes closing slowly and pats Darcy’s hand. “You sound weird.”

Darcy laughs. “Guess we have time for you to get used to that too. I told you to watch those movies with me, didn’t I?”

She mutters something that would be a reply if she was awake or coherent enough to understand half of what had just been said.

The last thing she hears before drifting off is someone asking, “ _Where_ exactly did you say you were from?”

* * *

(Jane sleeps, content, and doesn’t dream of home.)

(Steve Rogers dreams of nothing at all.)

(The Winter Soldier closes his eyes, his role in this latest job concluded and never hears the distant roar of airplane engines or toppled buildings.)

(And Darcy just waits until they all wake.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I did just imply that Hydra had a role in 9/11. Given the information that we got in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I really feel like this is well within the realm of possibilities.


	2. and onward to the end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Let her follow me straight to the sky_ , Jane decides. She could slow down while scaling heights, squinting as if she could see through the smog, waiting for Darcy to catch up.
> 
> Jane is twelve when she decides to save Darcy’s life. It wouldn’t be the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was forced to add some new tags after writing this because holy shit. I maybe forgot to mention that this story will be occasionally very unhappy and grim, but hey this is the end of the world. Things are fucked up.
> 
> In other words, PLEASE READ NEW TAGS and let me know if you think I should add any to them.
> 
> Also, I love Jane lots. Boom.
> 
> Unbetaed for now.

**2144**

Jane isn’t sure if she can remember a time when the world was not infected with a sort of madness. She’s watched the footage in class like any other student born in her generation. She’s seen a man casting a long shadow above all in his audience; his eyes near gleaming with orange light as he spoke of salvation.

The man who would save them all and leave their home in ruins in his wake.

Her parents told her that the end of everything came swifter for the Traditionalists because of this man with no previous rank or position, who stood up one day and people _listened_ when he declared God dead, or at least of apathetic to those who would look for to Him for guidance and protection from all of their fate.

“Only I can save you now. Do not waste time kneeling and come stand with me.”

Jane thinks that at one point maybe Mabel Oakland really had intended for all of mankind to walk with him to better days so long ago. Many blamed the Traditionalists for what befell them soon after he rose above and showed them the way.

How could they have allowed this man to live? All over riots swelled in the wake of this arrogant fool’s words. God will strike you down, many thought, but it wasn’t God who tried.

It wasn’t God who failed.

Not all who worshipped faced the fall out, the more progressive families hiding behind symmetrical faces and stashing away all signs of faith. It was the Traditionalists, both religious and not, that were forced to their knees before the man who had scorned them for kneeling.

Jane had heaved her lunch into a toilet after class, gasping over the bowl and feeling the hot press of tears in her eyes. She thought of Darcy, seven and slightly gap-toothed, and her life that (compared to Jane’s existence blessed with modified genes) faced sneers and discrimination. Wiping bile off her lips she’d made a promise to never leave the girl that tagged after her behind, suddenly all too aware of what consequences the little girl could face.

The consequences that supposedly didn’t exist anymore, even as statistics continued to tell a different story again and again.

_Let her follow me straight to the sky_ , Jane decides. She could slow down while scaling heights, squinting as if she could see through the smog, waiting for Darcy to catch up.

Jane is twelve when she decides to save Darcy’s life. It wouldn’t be the last time.

* * *

**2139**

They grow up poor. Well, Jane’s family grows up poor, forced to live side by side with Traditionalists and other desperate souls like themselves that at one point would never have stepped into this neighborhood.

Jane’s family fell from grace around the time she turns two.

Darcy’s family is conservative Jewish and Traditionalists because of it.

Jane isn’t allowed to play with the other children in the beginning, her parents convinced that soon they’d leave this place. This doesn’t bother Jane at first, who is content to play with her puzzles with the gravity of someone solving the mysteries of the universe.

She is seven when Darcy comes crashing (literally) into her life. The squealing two year old, speeding away from her put upon mother, running straight into Jane and making the older girl lose her grip on the project for school she’d so carefully assembled.

In that moment, she’d wanted nothing more than to smack the toddler, fueled with childish temper that even a blossoming genius could be swayed by. The inclination passed quickly as she stared down at the little girl who had fallen on her butt and was staring at Jane with a perplexed look on her face, seemingly bewildered at this sudden obstacle.

And Jane, who had been so lonely so long that she didn’t even know it, lifted Darcy to her feet just as the girl’s mother caught up.

Something in Darcy’s wide eyes promised Jane that she wouldn’t ever be lonely again.

Darcy is two when she unknowingly opens Jane’s world up. It wouldn’t be the last time.

* * *

**2150**

The girls are both teenagers when a new horror rears its head. Jane watches as Darcy’s mother sobs into her daughter’s head, Darcy trying desperately to comfort her and not yet fully aware of what she has been robbed of.

Jane’s parents rage. Appalled and helpless, her family huddles together and Jane tries not to cry as they listen to a devastated man tell all about what he’d discovered. The sterilized and neutered children of those whose families’ had forgone the now standard practice of genetic alteration, the purge of all supposed flaws.

The government justified this by claiming the inappropriateness of bringing children into a world dying slowly but assuredly. All were now given this “practical” option, but very few Traditionalists at this point had been given the chance to opt out. The officials cooed sympathetically, but stood firm in this “entirely necessary” course of action.

The evacuation is a few decades in.

Millions mourn the loss of so many futures.

Darcy wakes up the next morning and climbs the building where Jane’s favorite perch rests.

“It’s going to be okay,” she tells Jane softly, absently.

It is five years before they are even close to okay.

* * *

**2152**

Jane petitions for the early two-thousands before she tells Darcy about it.

There’s a pause as the other woman contemplates this and then a shrug.

“Whatever you think is best,” she drawls, used to her friend’s near bull-dozing decisiveness. “What are the chances they accept us anyway?” 

(Accepts _her_ anyway?)

Jane looks at her like she’s crazy. “Of course they’re going to. They _have_ to.”

Both women are very aware that those that manage these things don’t have to do anything they don’t care to, but Jane is determined to make it happen through sheer force of will.

She’s going to see stars, and she’s going to see them with Darcy by her side. To her, this is just the way it’s going to be.

Darcy is a little more realistic.

“You know that your chances go down to make the list by sponsoring me, right? They’ll want you to leave me behind.”

Jane narrows her eyes at some unseen opposition. “I’d like to see them try.”

Darcy presses a quick kiss to her forehead. “Well then, I guess it’s time for me to research our new home. Are you going to join me?”

Jane waves her hand dismissively. She’s already turning back to her charts. “Maybe later?”

She’s not that concerned about it. She knows Darcy will take care of it.

* * *

**2151**

She spends a whole year in seminars, picking the brains of scholars and consumed by the task set before her.

Darcy spends it making sure she is fed and watered, never setting foot on the University’s campus.

Jane is feverish for knowledge, absorbing it at a rapid pace that some contribute to the careful alteration of her genes while cradled in her mother’s womb. A boy who sits next to her during some of these lectures tells her that if she opened her eyes wide enough he thinks that he could see the universe in them.

(She kisses him once, a few weeks later. He’s pretty words and gentle hands but nothing more, so in the end she takes him to bed once and he wakes up to find her writing equations across his back, scolding him to hold still because some time during the night she found a question that needed answering with nothing handy to write it down on.)

Darcy listens patiently as Jane rambles about what this professor said and that other one claimed and laughs when Jane occasionally proves them wrong. She doesn’t understand what her friend is talking about half the time, but this is as close as someone like her could hope for an education and she wouldn’t give this up for most anything.

Darcy tells her that she’d starve to death without Jane.

Jane furrows her brow and tells her that it’s _Darcy_ that makes sure they don’t go hungry.

For a genius, Jane can be a little dumb. Darcy doesn’t bother to explain, content to listen instead and make the occasional snide comment about her classmates and professors.

She never tells Darcy about the class she takes on current events. She _can’t_. She hates her teacher, hates the students, and would rage if it wasn’t so _important_.

Because this? This is their way out.

So Jane keeps her mouth shut and her lips pressed together in a firm, white line.

She hides among monsters and she _learns_.

Her professor talks about fixed points in time. Another universe pinned in place when the world trembles and death yawns its hungry maw wide. When he asks for examples of some of these she raises her hand and her voice is deceptively even when she talks about the middle of the nineteen-hundreds, the slaughter that shook everyone and a poison no one could escape.

(She thinks about Darcy and how little a few centuries makes.)

She talks about the late nineteen-hundreds then, about the Tutsi and Hutus and neighbor cutting down neighbor.

She talks until he won’t let her anymore, and somewhere behind her she hears a couple of students idly chatting that he doesn’t silence.

Jane never mentions any of this to Darcy. Not for the rest of her days.

* * *

**2095**

Oakland holds the somehow cold orange glow in his hands and presents the gem for all to see.

“With this,” he announces, “we’ll have all the time in the world.

“With this, we’ll have _infinity_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Infinity Gems! Or at least my interpretation of the Time one. 
> 
> Next chapter is Darcy's turn, and will hopefully answer the majority of questions ya'll may have at this point. We'll get to the boys eventually. Jane and Darcy are getting more screen time until I get my _Jane_ and _Jane: The Political Science Intern_ movies. Steve and Bucky can wait.


	3. Not an update

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Possible two weekish delay.

After watching Age of Ultron last night it occurred to me that a couple of plot points of mine might not work as well. So I'm taking the next week to rewrite some chapters rather than posting tomorrow as planned. Or maybe I'll just say "fuck it" and not change a damn thing. I annoyed all my friends last night debating it. 

Otherwise, yay for watching Ultron! I hope ya'll enjoy(ed) it.


End file.
